Thank you for your recent email concerning our coverage of the Primate
Research Facility at Cambridge. I'm afraid I have to disagree with
your assessment.

The cost of providing security to the laboratory was given as one of
the reasons for the shelving of the project,and we were therefore bound
to feature this in our coverage. However, amongst others, the Director
of Animal Aid also made the point on the Today programme that testing
on animals was "a defunct methodology".

There was also exploration of this issue on BBC news online - I enclose
the link for your information.

Whilst I welcomed the news that the Primate Research
facility at Cambridge will not be built I was very
disappointed with your news coverage. The story
focused on the "threats" from animal rights activists
being the reason rather than the scientific evidence
against primate research, of which there is plenty.

All too often in your coverage of vivisection you
portray the debate as being between the scientific
need to use animals in research and the moral
arguments against doing so.

Putting the moral question to one side, on a purely
scientific level the need for animals in research
fails. The evidence that there is a need to use
animals in research does not stand up and that is not
covered in your reporting of vivisection.

Animal experimentation, far from being necessary,
often produces misleading results as substances
produce different results in humans than in other
animals and non-humans are incapable of communicating
many side effects such as nausea, headaches or stomach
pains. Many drugs that have been passed safe after
animal experiments have proved disastrous to humans
causing serious illness and deaths (for example,
Opren, Flosint, Zelmid, Halothane).

I hope in the future you cover vivisection more
objectively and give more coverage to the fact that
the justification for vivisection fails on a
scientific level.

Yours Sincerely

Mark

Fri Feb 06, 2004 3:13 pm

no futureGuest

Post subject:

It amazes me, Mark.

"Slaughter of the Innocent" was published over twenty years ago and yet the vivisection debate still does - despite what Sambrook thinks he is implying - take the fashion of morality versus science. Its unfortanate that the majority of people - who unlike myself (and, of course, yourself) do not take an active interest in the matter, and have not read books like the above and Vivisection Unveiled, etc - think that cutting up mice is an efective way to find preventions/ for human disease.

Sambrook adopts the usual method: dismissing your argument with a technical slight of hand. My impression of the mainstream medias coverage of vivisection is the same as yours. I have never heard a single dissenting voice - i.e. saying that vivisection is a scientific fraud - on television, and what i have read in the press is usual buried under a mountain of establishment guff.

Mon Feb 09, 2004 2:56 pm

Guest

Post subject:

It amazes me, Mark.

"Slaughter of the Innocent" was published over twenty years ago and yet the vivisection debate still does - despite what Sambrook thinks he is implying - take the fashion of morality versus science. Its unfortanate that the majority of people - who unlike myself (and, of course, yourself) do not take an active interest in the matter, and have not read books like the above and Vivisection Unveiled, etc - think that cutting up mice is an efective way to find preventions/ for human disease.

Sambrook adopts the usual method: dismissing your argument with a technical slight of hand. My impression of the mainstream medias coverage of vivisection is the same as yours. I have never heard a single dissenting voice - i.e. saying that vivisection is a scientific fraud - on television, and what i have read in the press is usual buried under a mountain of establishment guff.

dr

Mon Feb 09, 2004 2:56 pm

AndyN

Joined: 14 Jan 2004Posts: 43

Post subject:

Anonymous wrote:

It amazes me, Mark.

"Slaughter of the Innocent" was published over twenty years ago and yet the vivisection debate still does - despite what Sambrook thinks he is implying - take the fashion of morality versus science. Its unfortanate that the majority of people - who unlike myself (and, of course, yourself) do not take an active interest in the matter, and have not read books like the above and Vivisection Unveiled, etc - think that cutting up mice is an efective way to find preventions/ for human disease.

Sambrook adopts the usual method: dismissing your argument with a technical slight of hand. My impression of the mainstream medias coverage of vivisection is the same as yours. I have never heard a single dissenting voice - i.e. saying that vivisection is a scientific fraud - on television, and what i have read in the press is usual buried under a mountain of establishment guff.

dr

hi dr/mark

my own view is that we shouldn't use and abuse other animals for our own benefit, however great that may be, but (playing devils advocate..) if vivisection is 'scientific fraud' why does anyone bother to continue with its practice?